Swiss reject vivisection ban

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 10

Swiss reject vivisection ban

NZPA-Reuter Zurich Swiss voters yesterday overwhelmingly rejected a bid to ban vivisection which had been fiercely contested by the country’s pharmaceutical companies and opposed by the Government, Parliament and political parties. The project, launched by a prominent Swiss animal rights activist and environmentalist, Franz Weber, needed both the support of a majority of voters and of the Swiss cantons (regions) to be accepted.

After results from 20 cantons had been counted, not one of the 26 regions had voted in favour of the referendum, Swiss television reported.

A second anti-vivisection referendum had been launched in May by the Swiss Society for Animal Protection which said Weber’s demands went too far. The society wanted a drastic reduction of experiments, but did not seek their total abolition. Weber had called for the immediate prohibition of vivisection of vertebrates and of “cruel” experiments on animals. It would have made vivisection a criminal offence.

The Basle-based pharmaceutical groups launched a long campaign defending the experiments, arguing that their continuation was vital to the search for cures to killer diseases such as cancer and A.I.D.S.

The three biggest pharmaceutical companies, Ciba-Geigy, Hoffmann-La Roche and Sandoz, had also said that a ban on vivisection would force them to transfer research to other countries with the loss of thousands of jobs in Switzerland.

A study on their behalf by the independent Battelle Institute warned that in the long term abolition would lead to 13,000 lost jobs and cost the companies one billion Swiss francs ($826.5 million).

Among the most profitable of Swiss industries, the three companies had combined earnings of just under two billion francs ($1566 million) in 1984. The Government, which

had recommended a negative vote, said Switzerland already had one of the strictest vivisection laws in the world. It reduces experiments to what is termed the “indispensable” minimum and obliges .them to be authorised by commissions in the individual cantons.

Supporters of Weber criticised the Swiss law, in force since 1981, saying that the indispensable mininum was not suffiently defined and that animal rights activists sitting on the commissions were in a minority. Opponents of the referendum countered that the term “cruel” to describe experiments in the text of the vote was also open to interpretation.